


Face Turn

by schmerzerling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Comic Shop, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Coming Out, Dean Winchester Wears Panties, Humor, M/M, Matchmaking, Misunderstandings, Nerd Dean Winchester, Nurse Castiel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester Knows, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:33:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmerzerling/pseuds/schmerzerling
Summary: Dean Winchester—successful business owner, wrestling enthusiast, and all-around nice guy—is out and proud. Only he doesn't know it yet. And neither does the newest (hottest) guy this side of bumfuck Kansas.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Everyone
Comments: 75
Kudos: 739
Collections: SPN Crack, The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	Face Turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NowMakeThemKiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NowMakeThemKiss/gifts).



> Hey all!!!!
> 
> This is a weird fic, especially for me, but it turns out it's sometimes nice to write things that aren't soul-crushingly depressing, who'd have thought? I know I've been gone a long time, but I seem to have...finally found the Correct Assortment of Pharmaceuticals required for me to focus on anything for longer than two (2) minutes. So that's nice. I have some other stuff in the works, so I really hope to see y'all again soon. I hope this last season is treating you well!
> 
> This fic was written for Trash Brigade Secret Santa this (last) Christmas (whoops hahahahahaaa ehhhhh) for my amazing and beautiful and talented friend Christy, who lives in a magical AU town and leads a more interesting life than I could ever hope to. It is, believe it or not, inspired by real true events from her incredibly eventful hometown tales. And I really really hope she enjoys it! I love you, Christy!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Enjoy!!!!!

Oh no. 

He’s hot.

Possibly _too_ hot for bumfuck Kansas. 

He’s the dark-and-mysterious/well-built/light-eyed kind of triple threat you see on the covers of magazines, and here he is, tap dancing into Dean’s _personal_ dive like a perfectly stubbled Gene Kelly. 

He’s got that city stink on him, though, the sort of out-and-proud city stink that makes a person think copping eyefuls of dudes’ asses in a crowded, sawdust-covered backwoods Kansas bar is a good idea. And—well, it’s Ellen’s bar, and her daughter Jo is bi as hell and currently dating a TA named Anna from the university, so it’s not like it’s a _bad_ idea exactly. Except, well, everything in Dean’s brain screams _that’s a bad idea!!!,_ because Dean’s brain graduated summa cum laude from John Winchester’s School of Witchcraft and Bigotry.

Of course, Dean wouldn’t have noticed the guy checking out other guys if he weren’t himself checking out a guy, so it’s all sort of an ourobouros circle jerk of gay thoughts anyway. Like a snake eating its own dick.

Across the bar, tall, dark, ‘n fuck you laughs hard, with his whole body, at something someone’s said to him. Dean sits very still and tries to pretend it’s heterosexuality that’s oozing from his pores and not the gay-thoughts flop sweat he recognizes from trying to watch _Indiana Jones_ with his little brother. He concentrates so hard that he loses track of the hot guy in the crowd, and that’s a good thing until it’s _not_ and hot guy is two feet from him and asking, “Is this seat taken?” with a voice that sounds like someone took a sexy cheese grater to it.

Dean startles. He can feel the jolt to his system like a shock of electricity that shoots spasms up his arm and sends his half-empty pint of beer slopping onto the table. To make matters worse, it’s fucking karaoke night, so Dean’s on the knife’s edge anyway. The only person in the whole entire bar who doesn’t seem to be in active physical discomfort from Garth’s death warble on the stage is Sam’s wife Eileen, who’s placidly ordering another whiskey with sign language at the bar.

He grasps for something to say.

Fact is, the seat is taken. Sam and Benny and Eileen and Andrea left their fifth wheel to hold the table while they did whatever the fuck it was gross couples did.

The other fact is, Dean could have expressed that a lot more politely than seething a hissed, “ _Yes,_ ” and spilling beer down the poor guy’s front. 

Dean knows the responding face from his own repertoire—the flash of fear that hides behind a furrowed well-fuck-you-too brow. The guy’s stomped off before Dean’s brain can even _begin_ to formulate an apology. 

He mumbles, "Son of a bitch," and spares a sullen glance for the pool tables at the back of the bar, where he sees Benny shooting him his very best _I-know-you-like-dick-because-you-sucked-mine-once-brother_ puppy eyes from over the top of his cue.

Garth is still butchering “I’d Do Anything For Love” on the karaoke stage, his one allotted beer has gone completely warm and flat, and who the fuck died and made Dean designated driver anyway?

* * *

Behind the shelves, Dean can see a guy with that desolate, lost stance about him that Dean usually only sees on well-meaning mothers two days before Christmas. It’s out of place on him, the hopelessness is, because a) he’s a white guy, and white guys love to come swaggering into Dean’s shop like it belongs to them, and 2) he’s a really fucking _hot_ white guy. Really-fucking-hot guys tend to know they’re really fucking hot, and then, yadda yadda, see point (a). Like they fucking own the place. Like they’re god’s own gift to comics.

It takes Dean a minute more to process that, oh, yeah, he’s actually really _very_ familiar with hot white guy, too. He's the one Dean repression’d so hard at at the bar, because bumfuck Kansas is a mistress of cruel serendipity. 

Dean shuffles gracelessly behind a cardboard cutout of Freddy Kreuger as Charlie comes at the guy from out of nowhere, like a fly on particularly attractive shit. Like she sensed the freshness of him walking in the door, and she probably did. Charlie could coax a new pull list out of a not even particularly charismatic fence post, luring new customers in with the siren call of their state-of-the-art label maker and its five whole fonts and the impressive ceiling-high shelves of colorful cubbies they keep behind the counter.

Dean, definitely absolutely not watching the proceedings, busies himself divvying out comics into said cubbies from behind Freddy, a huge stack of Cates’ latest _Venom_ clutched limply against his chest. Across the distance, he hears hot guy say, “This is a beautiful shop. It’s so warm and bright and inviting.”

And Dean’s feels a tug in his chest. He loves his shop. He’s proud of his shop. He put his entire soul—and his entire life’s savings—into setting up a shop that could make all the things he loves accessible for _everyone_ in their little town. From the warm reading nook near the windows in the front, to the meeting room for board games and classes and clubs in the back, to the cozy signing area that he desperately populates with comic creators every month—everything in this place is geared toward fostering an environment he wished he’d had growing up. And every single piece of it has a little bit of _him_ in it.

There’s something about someone saying _your shop is beautiful_ that shoots straight to his fucking heart. Because maybe they think that Dean’s beautiful, too. 

Dean shakes his head, too little too late, and realizes dreamily that he’s given Kevin Tran five copies of the same single issue.

Across the room, Charlie pipes some kind of humble thank you and asks, “I know you’ve never been in the shop before, but do I know you from somewhere?” and he sees the guy’s face go up flaming like a dry field on the fourth of July.

“Ah, no. No. I’m new in town. I get that a lot. I have one of those faces.”

Which is absolute bullshit, because the guy only has _one of those faces_ if _those faces_ are the ones that are unfairly handsome and striking. Just one of those dime-a-dozen male model kinds of faces.

The conversation fades as they wander further away from the register, toward the stacks, and Dean strains to hear them. The guy’s looking for _some graphic novel_. Which he doesn’t know all that much about, except that—and he blushes again, cute and rocketing himself right on up Dean’s internal Kinsey scale, bless his fucking heart—it has a woman _breast_ feeding on the cover.

Charlie knows the comic, he knows she does, because there’s exactly one (1) comic that was ever ballsy enough to face a controversy for having a breastfeeding woman on their number one and then put a woman breastfeeding on basically every subsequent trade and hardcover they put out. Plus, Charlie knows way more about comics than Dean anyway. But.

He shouts, “ _Saga_ ,” and promptly drops all twenty-something issues of _Venom_ that he hasn’t unloaded on Kevin. Two sets of eyes turn on him. Charlie’s got him pegged before she’s even finished turning her head, he’s almost 100% sure, because Charlie knows what he looks like when he flirts with boys. Even though he doesn’t flirt with boys, never ever, he’ll swear on his mother’s fucking grave.

Well. Maybe his shithead _dad’s_ fucking grave. Just to be safe.

Across the room, Charlie’s eyes are burning with a very familiar _Dean-nobody-cares-you-like-dick_ energy. Same energy she’s had since she saw Dean macking on Mick-the-foreign-exchange-student behind the bleachers in ninth grade.

“It’s _Saga_ ,” he repeats, and clears his throat. Awkward quiet. “Brian K. Vaughan.” Another awkward pause. “Uh, Fiona Staples?”

The last bit comes out as a question, even though he fucking well knows it’s Fiona fucking Staples. 

Hot guy doesn’t look impressed. Even if he hasn’t pegged Dean for the asshole at the bar yet, it occurs to Dean what it maybe looked like when he shouted across the room to interrupt his female employee in the middle of a conversation he very much wasn’t a part of with what amounts to a pretty fucking obvious comic book fact. He’s facing the same _oh no I’m **that** white guy_ crisis he’s been having since Charlie sat him down to tell him about privilege when he was seventeen when Charlie rolls her eyes and says, “Thank you for your wisdom, o benevolent comic overlord.” 

Which, fair, but she could throw him a fucking bone here, because Dean’s in no way out enough at this point to throw the bone himself.

He ducks behind the counter to pick up the please-not-fucking-damaged-god-save-him-from-anal-collectors issues, and he doesn’t rise from his dogged crouch until he hears someone clear their throat behind him.

Unfairly hot guy has two _Saga_ hardcovers at the register ready to buy. He’s looking at Dean with straight up homicidal fire in his eyes, and regrettably, that just makes him even more unfairly hot.

He stands and turns and picks up his barcode reader, and it doesn’t fucking work because fuck whatever fucking idiot made the barcode pink instead of black on this fucking thing and then covered it in plastic; that motherfucker deserves a special place in hell. Even worse, he has to put on his glasses to read the tiny numbers and punch in the ISBN by hand, and it’s fucking _torture_ how long he’s dragging this out and he only has himself to blame for making this weird.

“Good book,” he says weakly, after he’s entered the ISBN wrong once. He starts again, hen-pecking the digits with a stupid shaky finger. “You like BKV?”

“What?”

“Uh. Brian K. Vaughan.” He points at the cover. “He’s the writer.”

“Oh. No. I don’t read comics.”

“Oh, well, you seen any, uh, _Lost_?”

“No.”

“ _Runaways_?”

“No.”

“ _Under the_ —”

“—I wasn’t aware I was going to have to endure a gatekeeper’s quiz at the register,” he snaps before Dean can finish. There’s something in his eyes that tells Dean he remembers exactly who Dean is. “Tell me, do I have to answer your questions three before you’ll accept my money?”

Dean feels the blood drop from his face to his stomach in a rush. Through his glasses, fogging slightly near where he’s sweating on his nose, he can see his finger poised above a three or maybe an eight or oh god he’s forgotten what numbers look like.

“Ah, n—no.” He swallows. “He’s just pretty famous in comics is all. So. Thought you...might.”

“Well I don’t.” He sniffs. “I _don’t read_ comics.”

Dean sucks in his lips and nods slowly, like he isn’t fucking holding on to the last tangled thread of this conversation with cracked fucking fingernails. “Yeah, I mean. So you. Said.”

“I find the toxic culture surrounding them...abhorrent.”

“Toxic culture.”

Dean finally manages to enter the ISBN, and then he has a whole second hardcover to do anyway, Jesus fucking Christ someone cancel the fucking series already. If this guy had the inclination, and Dean isn’t entirely sure he doesn’t, he could absolutely use the compendiums as a murder weapon.

“Yes. The toxic white, male, _heterosexual_ fans control the industry and I don’t care to support them.”

“I—oh. I mean yeah that’s definitely—those for sure exist.”

The guy gives him a silent, assessing once-over and says, “Yes,” again. “They do.” 

Dean feels ashamed for something he’s not sure he’s guilty of for the whole rest of the transaction. Though maybe the shame comes, in part, from the peek he takes at the guy’s ( _Castiel’s_ ) credit card to learn his name. 

Then he’s out the door before Dean can even offer him a receipt.

* * *

Dean will have to see Castiel again, there’s no question about it. It’s just a matter of mentally preparing himself before he does. After all, in bumfuck Kansas, there’s a significantly high probability of running into the same five fucking people every day of your goddamn life. _Especially_ if you don’t want to. 

For instance, Dean knows Donna-from-the-donut-shop, knows all about her wife and kids, because he doesn’t just see her at the donut shop, he sees her at the Piggly Wiggly and the Post Office and the diner down the street. He sees Aaron-from-the-library-and-also-from-Dean’s-bed-once-okay-maybe-twice-definitely-no-more-than-three-times more than he’d strictly like to, given the also-from-Dean’s-bed bit, but Dean likes to donate overstock to him at the library, so there’s really no escaping him. And he sells some pretty good weed behind the Jack in the Box sometimes. He knows all the fucking teenage girls—Krissy Something and Claire Something and Alex Something and Patience Something—who harrass him about his relationship status over Settlers of Catan every goddamn weekend, like they don’t have anything _better_ to do. He knows everyone who’s ever divorced anyone because Sam’s represented every last one of them in family court. He knows every member of the the deaf community here, because Eileen teaches them sign language in evening classes. He knows every pisspoor little thespian in Miss Braeden’s PM kindergarten class because he watched his niece act circles around them in the esteemed spring production of _Rainbow Fish_.

But the last thing he was expecting, the very last, is knowing now that Castiel is not just toxic-masculinity Castiel, not just I-hate-comics Castiel, he’s also Gabriel “The Candyman” Novak’s manager. And turns out having “one of those faces” means he has “one of those faces that sits on the side of an amateur pro wrestling ring looking put out while his brother gets his face mashed into the mat by wrestling legend Gunner Lawless.”

The Candyman is a staple of the local scene. He’s another guy Dean knows inside and outside the ring, and he’s kind of a heel inside and outside the ring, too. He’s the wrestler Sam loves the most to hate. Sam’s been throwing popcorn at him and booing him onto the stage ever since his first appearance, where he squinted through the show lights, out into the audience, _specifically_ to call Sammy a fucking nerd. Which, honestly, made Dean kind of dig him. 

And _Dean_ knows it’s all in good fun, because he comes to the comic shop all-the-fucking-time so he’s a nerd too, but true to his name he’s always sucking on a fucking lollipop, and he’s one of those fucking _loitering_ types who would sooner sit in an aisle with a comic and read it in-shop before he paid four fucking dollars for it, even though Dean knows for a _fact_ he makes a pretty fucking penny in some kind of investment gig. So Dean likes to throw popcorn at him too. And he _also_ likes to watch Gunner fuckin’ Lawless annihilate him month after month.

But this—

Sam stops halfway through a manic bite on a hot dog to look over at him, squinting in the dark of the dimmed rec center’s lights. He’s got mustard and ketchup smeared on his cheeks and he’s all wound up with excitement. It’s times like these he remembers his baby brother has a daughter at home, fast asleep in bed while her stupid dad boos at a guy in tights and gorges himself on mystery meat.

“Why aren’t you booing the Candyman?”

Dean gestures the stage. The cool presence on the side of the stage is new. He and Sammy have been booing the Candyman for a long time, and he’s never had this broad-shouldered, not-such-a-mystery man in his corner before. Candyman’s particular brand of heel-ing is glitz and glam—he’s got the bedazzled sort of look that translates to I’m-better-than-you in wrestling speak, and the good ol’ boys like Gunner love to take ‘im apart for the everyman. Today, though, he’s less recognizable, looking comparably subdued, trademark mask aside.

What’s weirder is—his manager, Castiel, is in _scrubs_. And it doesn’t look like a costume so much as it looks like Gabriel dragged the poor guy in straight from a shift at the hospital and made him sling a stethoscope around his neck like a prop.

“Because they’re switchin’ up his gimmick, man, look at the fuckin’ manager. The new costume.”

Sam squints.

“You think he’s going legit?”

Dean has no idea if he’s going legit. He just knows he doesn’t want to boo the son of a bitch with the chest-to-hip ratio that motherfucker has in those scrubs. And he doesn’t want to give him another fucking reason to _hate_ Dean. More than anything, he sort of wants to get on his knees and beg. 

He shrugs.

Turns out, though, Sam was right—the Candyman and his manager keep consulting through the match. Gabriel doesn’t do any of the unethical shit he usually does to get heat, and then everyone can’t seem to help but be charmed when the sideline scrub guy silently leads a five-foot-nothin’ doughball in a bedazzled mask to pinning Gunner the-brick-shithouse Lawless at the end of the fucking match.

It’s the upset no one saw coming, but Dean can’t bring himself to be too mad about it, because that probably means that Castiel will be back as a staple of the bit. And that means Dean gets to look at his ass from the stands some more. Maybe next time he’ll brave the fuckin’ splash zone to get a good look at his thighs in that material.

When the match is over and everyone’s filing toward the exits, Gunner Lawless seeks out Dean in the crowd and yells his name from where he’s busy cleaning up the stage. Gunner used to be a pretty famous face in the national pro wrestling scene, but he’s retired to a quieter life running the local wrestling scene in bumfuck Kansas. It’s one of the reasons their local shows are so robust. And there’s a part of Dean—a ten-year-old, sexually repressed part of Dean—that still can’t believe he gets to come see Gunner do his thing every other week.

They share a certain history, he and Dean, so he’s been trying to get Dean on the goddamn stage for-fucking-ever. He’s convinced Dean’s got the flair for the dramatic it takes to rally a crowd, and hell, maybe that’s true, but Dean can’t say he’s really, uh, _confident_ enough to traipse into a well-lit cage in what amounts to a goddamn speedo.

“I’m gonna get you up here one of these days, Dean-o!” he calls, waving effortlessly with a folding chair in one hand. He sure is _built_ like he runs a wrestling federation, yowza.

Dean grins. “You can keep on tryin’, man! You might just wear me down!” And he waves a goodbye back, only blushing a little.

On the way out the double doors, Sam bumps Dean’s shoulder with his. 

“You should do it sometime, you know. It’d be fun.”

Dean waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just want me to put on a pair of tights so you get blackmail material.”

Sam laughs. He’s a little bit drunk off cheap ringside beers, happy and smiley and chill. Dean hums, content.

“You were quiet tonight,” Sam observes after a moment of easy silence. “Would think that upset’d have you losing your mind.”

“Yeah, I—” Dean bites his lip. “Well, I met that guy, the scrubs guy, at the shop. Guess he sorta got in my head.”

It’s blissful in the springtime evening chill outside the sweaty heat of the arena. Dean closes his eyes and leans into it as they head back toward the Impala.

“Oh?” Sam says lightly, treading careful ground. 

“I don’t think he liked me much.”

“And that...matters?”

Dean opens his eyes and shrugs explosively at the peaceful night sky. When he looks over at Sam, Sam’s got the _Dean-I-love-you-and-I-know-you-like-dick_ pout on.

“Everybody likes me, dude! And besides, I need all the customers I can _get_ —”

Sam snorts. “Really, Dean? _Everybody_? Are you _sure_? Maybe we should take a survey—”

“Hey! Maybe not my exes, I mean, but, uh, _yeah_ , absolutely. You know I’m adorable.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

They walk in the quiet for a minute, and Dean’s happy. He knows, abstractly, that his brother knows all this shit, about the whole fucking-guys business, but Dean doesn’t like to talk about it. It exists in a different sphere entirely from Sam’s purview. But.

“And he was kinda—he seems. Nice.” 

“Nice.” Sam deadpans.

Dean sniffs. “I mean he, like.” Dean flounders. “Good—to look at. Nice, uh—” Butt. Butt. Butt. “Head.” No. “Hair?” No. ”Face.” Nailed it.

It takes Dean a hot second to realize that Sam’s not walking with him anymore. He turns around and sees Sam parked a couple paces back and leaning, staggered, against the window of a white minivan covered in those stupid _our family_ decals (and jesus, they must have like eight fucking kids). He’s laughing so hard he’s wheezing. 

Dean feels all the blood that isn’t digesting his hot dogs flood straight to his face.

“Nice head—”

“Shaddup,” Dean turns around, slaps his palms over his ears, and starts on toward the car again.

“Nice _head_ , Dean.”

“ _Samuel_ —”

“Hey was that Gunner Lawless poster you had on your wall for like ten—”

“Stop it!”

“—years, Dean! Ten years! Was that _good to look at_ too?”

“You can walk home if that’s how it’s gonna be!”

Sam keeps it up for at least ten more minutes, like Dean saying _one little thing_ gives him license to jump on Dean’s personal hangups. Dean gives him a ride home regardless, though, because frankly, Sam may know _now_ that Dean maybe possibly jerked it to that Gunner poster a _whole_ lot, but he didn’t know how much better the view of it was from Sam’s bed, anyway.

* * *

Suddenly, Castiel is everywhere. 

Donna-from-the-donut-shop talks about how he came in this morning in running shorts and got a nonfat latte and isn’t he so _handsome_ , Dean? And Ruby and Meg, the waitresses at the diner, lean with their elbows on Dean’s table knowingly, batting their eyelashes and talking about the guy’s _big tip_. At some point, Sheriff Mills stops him for a nonexistent traffic violation specifically so she can flip up her doofy clip-on sunglasses and make Dean read the _it-ain’t-a-crime-to-like-dick_ that he _knows_ is reflected in her eyes. He’s pretty sure that when Sam drags him to a new exhibit down at the art gallery, the doe-eyed docent has woven Castiel straight into the fucking native beadwork exhibit.

By the time fucking _Gabriel_ walks into his shop at 10 am on a Wednesday and starts casually perusing the hentai, Dean’s dangerously close to mcfreakin’ losing it.

He corners Gabriel in the dark, roped-off smut nook.

“Alright, who the fuck is he?”

Gabriel looks up from his filth and bats his eyelashes.

“Why, whoever do you mean, Deaniel?”

Dean snatches—he does a double-take, because he doesn’t remember stocking _that_ — _Peachy-Butt Girls_ from his hands and puts it on a shelf about a foot above Gabriel’s head.

“Hey!”

“I absolutely _will_ start making you pay for every comic you read in this store, Gabe, you _know_ I will.”

Gabriel sighs. 

“His name’s Castiel. Cas.”

Dean tries his best to look surprised at that, his face a perfect mask of _what? no. really?_

“And?”

“ _And_ he’s my little brother, numbnuts.”

Dean tries not to act as desperate for information about him as he absolutely is, and he just barely restrains his teenage girl impulse to ask _what’s his favorite color what foods does he like what’s his favorite Zep album is he single—_

“Oh, yeah, awesome, sweet,” he covers coolly. “What does he do for a living?” Nailed it.

“Thought that woulda been obvious since you were at the most recent throwdown.” Gabriel preens, clearly expecting a compliment on his recent win, like he could _actually_ beat Gunner Lawless in a fair fight. When he waits for a hot second and Dean doesn’t deliver, he concedes, “He’s a fucking nurse, Dean. A peds nurse.”

A fucking pediatric nurse. Of course. Of _fucking_ course. It just fucking figures doesn’t it, just fucking—

“And, honestly, I don’t know what the fuck you did, but he sure as hell doesn’t like _you_.”

Dean’s brain stalls, still angry that this unfairly hot guy saves sick kids for a living, and in the moment of weakness, the teenage girl in him wins. “He’s _talked_ about me?”

“Only in the ‘that Ken doll asshole straight guy’ capacity.” Gabriel squints at him and smiles his most infuriating smile. Specifically, it’s an _I-once-saw-you-sucking-Gunner-Lawless’s-dick-backstage_ sort of smile, like the cat that caught the agressively bisexual canary. And Dean can’t even be fucking mad that Gabriel knows that about him, because he’d do it again in the blink of a fucking eye, because having Gunner Lawless’s dick in your mouth is _transcendent._ “And I gotta say, he’s usually smarter than that.”

Dean rakes his hand down his face. And then, listlessly, “Fuck you.”

“Honestly, it’s kind of pathetic that you guys haven’t fucked yet, because you’re exactly the right brand of compatible idiot.”

Dean puts _Peachy-Butt Girls_ back in Gabriel’s hands with a resigned sigh. Gabriel thumbs open to whatever titillating bit he left off on, pointedly licking his thumb before he flicks through the pages.

“Any chance he’ll give me another shot, you think?” Dean asks. Because, good ass aside, he seems—cool. And the dating pool here is a little. Uh, exhausted. And everyone’s been selling this guy so hard there’s gotta be something to it. The asshole has five stars on gay bumfuck Kansas Yelp, already.

“Well,” Gabriel says, eyes sparking. “He doesn’t like closeted guys.”

And. Well. That figures. Dean nods and sighs, resigned, and starts back to where he’s divvying out the most recent Diamond shipment. 

“Thanks for the _Saga_ hardcovers, by the way, I figured he bought ‘em from here and not online ‘cause they didn’t stink like misery and poverty wages,” Gabriel calls after him. Dean stops, turns again, fiddles absently with an open longbox of vintage single issues.

“They were for you, huh?”

“Yeah. Not like Cas really knows anyone else in town.” Gabriel smiles another secret smile, but this time the secret isn’t his, so he doesn’t know how to read it. “Cas has been reading them too, though, you know. He’s already on volume two.”

Dean’s heart flutters.

“Does he like ‘em?”

Gabriel smirks. His eyes smolder. “You know what’s weird? I _actually_ think he does.”

Dean hides a pleased smile behind a comic book that’s misplaced under the wrong letter. He picks it up, replaces it correctly when he’s done being twelve. He clears his throat.

“Did he come here specifically to be Candyman’s coach, then?”

“Nah, he came here because he’s a fucking worrywart.” Gabriel laughs and rubs a finger up the side of his nose. He looks embarrassed now, almost, which isn’t a look he wears well. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of shame in him. “And anyway, you were there this last weekend. Candyman’s out.”

“Sam was screaming in my ear about what a shithead you are so I didn’t catch the new name.”

“Don’t worry, you don’t know ‘cause I don’t have one yet. That was just the debut. The origin story.” Gabriel returns _Peachy-Butt Girls_ to the shelf and goes back to scanning titles. He hovers over _Peachy-Butt Girls 2_ for a hot second, but apparently the first one didn’t rate enough to merit a revisit. “And Sam’s a fucking dweeb, by the way.”

“Says the man with his finger on _Meaty Minxes._ ”

“You know? Fair.”

“So what new name were you thinking, then?”

And Gabriel lets out a huge, beleaguered sigh.

* * *

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Sam says, mouth full, again with the hot dog horking. Charlie’s with them this time, too, and she’s wrist deep in nacho cheese on a little plastic tray. Right now, though, she’s pounding herself on the chest, the victim of a hilarity-induced nacho cheese blast straight to the lung. “You—you can’t be fucking serious.”

“Would I lie about something _this_ funny?”

Gabe’s new stage name hadn’t been listed on the posters outside, just pictures of the Candyman’s mysterious new subdued persona. But the announcer screams it now, and it scrolls jerkily across the old scoreboard on the wall of the rec center like it isn’t the most ridiculous fucking thing anyone’s ever heard.

Charlie gets enough breath to wheeze, “ _Diabeto_?”

“You know, it’s a serious medical condition,” Sam says sternly, like he isn’t covered in mustard again. “I hope he’s doing his best to keep it under control.”

“ _Diabeto?”_ she sounds like a tire hissing out the last of its air. 

“I mean, his nurse little brother moved in with him, so he’s probably pretty serious about not dying or losing a limb or whatever the fuck.”

Charlie, wiping tears from her eyes with a nacho cheese-crusted napkin, says, “This is true character growth. The hero’s journey. Hubris. Downfall,” she gestures dramatically at the ground, “and rebirth.” She gestures up, up at the flickering scoreboard. “Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of an overtaxed pancreas.”

The response to _Diabeto_ ’s entrance is mixed at best. Maybe Gabriel doesn’t have footing with the character yet, maybe he doesn’t know how to _not_ be a fucking heel. That isn’t to say he doesn’t _commit_ , because he _does._ Walking onto the stage with a fucking carrot stick and biting it loudly in half as a means of intimidation is a show of commitment worthy of an award in and of itself, even if it does leave the audience a bit confused as to how they’re supposed to feel about the whole thing.

Add in the hot nurse to the performance and people seem to be more on board, and Dean can’t really blame them. He’s on board for Castiel too. 

Once Cas is there, they make an unreal theatrical production of him taking Gabriel’s blood sugar under the spotlight on stage, and at the end of it, Gabriel takes the mic from the ref, holds up a very real digital meter, and says, “Looks like my blood sugar’s in range to _kick your ass._ ”

Castiel’s eyeroll is visible even to Dean’s eye, on the third row of the bleachers stageside. Dean can’t help but smile.

“Oh my god,” Charlie whispers, hovering somewhere between delighted and appalled. “I can’t believe this is real.”

“At least he seems committed to raising _awareness…_ ” Sam says, half-finished hot dog resting limply in his lap. Maybe ol’ Diabeto blew the wind out of his sails on the junk food front. “And providing...representation?”

“Awareness? Representation, Sam? It’s a stupid gimmick,” Charlie snaps. “His name, and I can _not_ stress this enough, is _Diabeto_.”

“I mean, it’s not a gimmick or like...appropriation, because he did _actually_ over-sugar himself straight to diabetes,” Sam shrugs. “Maybe he’s just trying to cope. People cope in different ways.”

Charlie and Sam fade a bit into the background as they continue debating the merits of a diabetes-based wrestler, and Dean takes the opportunity to get his ogling in. He did, in fact, choose a strategic position for them this time around. _Right_ behind where Castiel stood on the sidelines, pretending to counsel his brother into some kind of medically sound victory. His impatience makes him shift his weight, and so Dean sees _exactly_ where he’s fixin’ to bust out of those fucking scrub pants. They’re barely fucking holding on.

He feels the sharp pain of an elbow digging straight into his ribs, and it drags him reluctantly away from the very specific divot in Castiel’s left ass cheek that Dean was committing his whole awareness to.

“ _Ow,_ Charlie.”

“Don’t act like I don’t see you there, Winchester. That’s the guy from the comic shop. The one you _flirted_ with.” Dean feels himself go red in the dark.

“Oh yeah!” Sam chirps brightly.

“I—didn’t.” Dean says half-heartedly, maybe for the sake of his little brother’s tender ears, but then again, last week he told Sam that Cas was cute, so it’s not like it’s anything he hasn’t heard. “Charlie, he thinks I’m a homophobic chauvinist.”

“I didn’t say you flirted _well_.” She shrugs magnanimously. “You obviously talked to Gabriel, did you find out anything else about him?”

On stage, Gabriel is having his first go at his opponent, Cesar Cuevas, who’s tag-teaming at the ropes with his husband Jesse. The two of their powers combined can’t seem to beat Gabriel, though, and Dean’s sort of lost the thread of the plot a little, but there must be a reason for it. Dean concentrates very hard without concentrating at all, somehow.

“Yeah. He’s Gabriel’s brother, and...and it’s all a moot point anyway. Gabriel as good as said he’d never wanna be with me.”

Sam’s face takes on the wounded puppy quality that makes him look fucking ten again, his eyes going liquid and shimmery. 

“Why wouldn’t he wanna be with you?” The righteous little brother indignation in his tone makes Dean smile. “Last week you told me everyone _loves_ you, anyway.”

“I…” Dean pulls in a deep breath, looks down at his fidgety hands. “Gabriel said his brother doesn’t date closeted guys.”

Dean doesn’t look up, because woe is him, he can picture the _pitying_ looks on their faces and he doesn’t want that pity in his life, alas, he has too much pride for all that—

In the midst of the cheering and the booing around them, Dean hears Charlie snort indelicately, barely holding back a laugh. Dean whips his head up to see if he was mistaken and, no, she’s _definitely_ laughing. He whips his head again toward Sam, and even though Sam is better at restraining it and reining his face in, he looks like he’s about to fucking lose it too.

“What the fuck, Charlie.”

“No, no, Dean, I’m just—”

Sam loses his self-control and lets out what Dean can only describe as a braying guffaw. It’s so loud the people in front of them turn to look.

“It’s not funny!”

“No, no. It’s not, I’m sorry, but.” Charlie looks at Sam and nods, and he nods back. “Dean. Sweetie,” she says, placing a gentle nacho cheese hand on his knee. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re not closeted.”

His brain whites out. The cheering and the lights and the stage and the beautiful fucking thighs all fade into the gray ether.

He says, “What?”

“Like, don’t get me wrong, you’re _terrible_ at flirting with men but—Dean, _everyone,_ and I mean _everyone_ in town knows you sleep with guys.”

“It’s not exactly a big place, Dean,” Sam placates. “And you’ve—ah—I mean. You’re not exactly, uh— _celibate_.”

Charlie chimes in, “He means you’re kind of a slut.” 

“Charlie!”

“ _Well_ , he _is!_ “

“Jesus, please don’t make me think about my brother fucking around any more than I already am.”

“No,” Dean says, “No, there’s no way _everyone_ knows.”

“Everyone except, _apparently_ , Gabriel’s manager slash nurse slash brother.”

“I’m,” Dean runs his fingers through his hair, slicking it back. “I mean. I’m cool. I’m subtle.”

Charlie and Sam both bust out laughing again, the fucking assholes.

“Yeah, okay, Dean ‘subtle’ Winchester, the immaculately groomed overcompensation machine who drives the massive phallus around town and hits on anything that stands still long enough.”

“I—okay. I mean...there’s no way _everyone_ knows,” Dean insists doggedly.

“A few weeks back, your niece drew blobby you holding hands with a blobby dude, Dean. Pretty sure it’s hanging in her kindergarten classroom now.”

“That was a really good drawing,” Sam chimes in. “Mary is so advanced for her age.”

“I thought that was...supposed to be Sam.”

“The guy in the drawing was black, Dean” Charlie placates.

“I—” Of course Dean didn’t think it was Sam. Dean knew exactly who it was. It was Victor, from that five seconds where he was fucking Victor, and the two of them took Mary to breakfast while Sam had some kind of Very Official Law Crisis. Victor let her play with his badge. It was all very charming. “Yeah. Well. Okay. But.”

“Dean, I don’t know how to tell you this but—your name sign has the word _dick_ in it.”

“It _what_ —?” He sputters. “I—thought. The letter D?”

“Yeah,” Sam deadpans. “Like in the sign for dick.” He signs two words back to back, and one is definitely Dean’s name sign—a letter D that pulls away from the nose and transitions smoothly into a swooping motion like the sign for _beautiful_. And the other is—a lot like the beginning of Dean’s name sign.

“Eileen decided that for me!”

Charlie nods. “Eileen is very astute.”

“Okay, but my family doesn’t _count_ —”

“Oh, Dean, honey. I can go on. Should I go on?”

Dean doesn’t respond, and he’s not looking at Cas either, because suddenly he’s looking at every single person he knows in the audience of the wrestling match tonight—which is a _lot_ of them, because in a town this small, you kind of get the same crowd at all the events. He wonders how many of them know he fucks guys. Then he thinks about fucking Gunner Lawless in possibly the least secure backstage in a town where the gossip mill basically singlehandedly fuels the town through the work week.

“—And one time, when you and Aaron were still together on the regs, you must’ve boinked in one of the study rooms in the library, and there was a post on the community Facebook about it. Because you were corrupting the children or something—”

“ _Everyone_?”

“You attract every baby queer in the county with the force of your not-heterosexualness. You have meetings for LGBT youth at your comics shop. You put on Pride events. You have displays recommending queer books and authors.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just called not being a shithead, _Charlie_.”

“And I _hate_ to say it, Dean—”

“ _Do_ you though—”

“—but Jesse and Cesar are well-known in the kink community around town, and everyone knows that they sometimes bring in a third—”

Dean can feel the flush about to overtake him, melt off his face and finish him for good.

Sam screeches. “Jesus fucking Christ, Charlie, he _gets_ it—”

“You went to Ellen’s pride event at the bar that she had for Jo in June—”

“Don’t be stupid Charlie, lots of people went to that—”

“—and you left with fucking _Michael_ , and everyone _saw it,_ and Dean he’s _such_ a fucking closeted asshole you _know_ he talks about this shit with his church buddies behind your back.”

“I—”

“And lesbians chat too, Dean. If you’ll recall that I _happen_ to be one of them. And, though I had you pegged from the start, I never judged you for or called out your sluttiness.” She pats his arm. “And, like, by the way Dean. Half the town is _totally_ queer, anyway.”

On stage, Gabriel is improbably sitting on a visibly defeated Cesar—who’s roughly a foot taller than him and twice his breadth in the shoulders—and lounging in a victory pose. The ref announces his name over the sound system and somehow manages to take himself seriously when he does. Castiel has his arms crossed, and he still looks pretty fucking unimpressed, but there’s a reluctant smirk tugging up one side of his mouth. Gabriel waves his arms and flexes at Cas specifically, and Cas smiles bigger, like he’s smiling because Gabriel is smiling, and that’s nice. Dean knows that feeling. Being happy because you did something stupid and it made your stupid brother happy.

“Dean,” Sam says quieter, closer, with more feeling. “You _do_ know no one gives a shit, right?”

Looking at Gabriel’s face, he remembers that unfathomable _something_ he’d had in his eyes when he’d told Dean that Cas didn’t like closeted guys, and, oh _ha ha,_ you absolute fucking heel. It’s not fucking _fair_ everyone knew he was out before he did.

Dean whispers, “Son of a bitch.”

Charlie slaps him on the back.

* * *

It’s the law of the universe, of course, that now that he _wants_ to see Castiel and tell him the good news that—turns out he hasn’t been in the closet for forever, surprise!, and he’s not a raging homophobe, and he just doesn’t know how to flirt with men, oh god, please—he’s absolutely nowhere to be seen. 

The girls at the diner haven’t seen him, and they’re gossips. They remember absolutely everyone, and they would tell Dean where he was in a hot second if they knew. He doesn’t show up at the comic shop again. Dean wasn’t expecting him to, necessarily, but it doesn’t stop his desperate bid to appear as if he knew he was out all along by setting up a very juicy _From Your Local Bisexual Comic Shop Owner_ display at the front of the store. Charlie has added a few lady-centric books herself and tacked on a _(And His Lesbian Best Friend/Employee)_ post-it note to the sign _._

Dean’s fairly convinced Castiel is avoiding him. After all, per previous evidence, there’s only so long you can avoid someone in bumfuck Kansas. Unless you don’t leave your house or you memorize someone’s schedule so completely you know exactly where _not_ to go at what times. Maybe Castiel hates him _that_ much, and if that’s the case, Dean’s sort of flattered he’s got _that much_ of the guy’s brainspace on lockdown.

“You’re being paranoid, Dean. He’s probably just busy at work,” Charlie reassures him as she’s restocking their new comics shelves one Wednesday. There’s sunlight streaming through the windows at the front of his shop, and her hair burns an otherworldly bright red in it. “He works at the hospital right? There was that big bus accident in the next county, and I’m sure they transported some of the patients here. Nurses work long hours on weird days.”

Stupid Castiel and his stupid noble profession. Dean sits slumped behind the register, doubled over with his chin flat on the counter and his arms hanging limp between his legs. He is very busy moping, being generally useless, and watching Charlie run his shop. She does a very good job of it, honestly. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t got any otherworldly sunbeam looks going for him. He’s well aware he looks like a well-sculpted lump.

Charlie sighs. “Dean, make yourself useful. Go unload those Funkos. I’m not touching them, and you’re the one who insists on stocking whole shelves of the things.”

“I hate stocking the Funkos. Their eyes, Charlie.” He shudders. “They pierce me.” 

“Then why do you order them?”

“Because they sell like goddamn hotcakes and I have a fucking business to run.”

The bell above the door rings a signal that someone’s entered the store, and Dean straightens his back so fast he’s pretty sure he gives himself whiplash. But when he sees that it’s just slightly irritating regular Becky Rosen, he slumps back down again, knocks his chin back into the formica countertop so hard his teeth give an audible _clack_.

Becky, way too fucking exhuberant as per usual, immediately begins perusing their stock of Funko Pops, like they’d summoned her there with the force of their hatred.

She gushes, “Do you have any of this month’s new ones in yet?” and Dean lets out the most put-upon sigh he can muster.

“Don’t mind him,” Charlie says, shooting him a glare. “He’s just sulking because he’s a moody teenager and his little crush doesn’t like him back. I’ll go grab the new stock.” Charlie walks behind the counter toward the door to the stockroom, and as she passes him, she pinches one of his cheeks. Dean, very magnanimously, does not bite her finger. 

Charlie knew what she was doing letting slip to Becky that he was in the midst of a sulky unrequited love affair, because Becky can’t keep her nose out of anyone’s fucking love life, and true to form, her eyes light right up, like Christmas has come early and she has a brand new crop of gay smut waiting for her under the Christmas tree.

Sometimes, Dean doesn’t necessarily _like_ knowing the tastes of every single comic-loving asshole in bumfuck Kansas.

“Is it the new guy?” Becky says, practically swooning. “The one that works at the hospital?”

Dean sits up straight again, balks. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me? How does _everyone_ —”

“I told you!” Charlie sing-songs, returning from the stock room with a big box clutched tight to her chest. Once she’s past the curtains to the back and the Freddy Kreuger by the register, she does a delicate little swirl before she sets the box down and whips out a nasty-looking box cutter to hack it open. “Everybody knows, Dean. Everybody.”

“I mean, you’re not exactly subtle, even if I weren’t paying close attention.” Becky always talks very fast, and now she barely breathes through the words as she crouches in front of the box of soulless nightmares. “And I am, Dean. Paying very close attention.” He blinks.

“Is that—a threat?” Becky, burbling with vaguely threatening laughter, doesn’t answer. She digs a little bit and selects a Captain America Funko out of the box, even though he knows for a fact that she has about 20 other Cap Funko variants waiting for her at home. “You know that one’s just more expensive because they splashed some red paint on the same model, right?”

“Shh. He’s ‘battleworn,’” Becky insists fondly, running a gentle hand over the top of the box. She goes back to rummaging. “And anyway, don’t change the subject. Everyone knows you’ve been mooning over that guy.”

“Except for the man himself,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, except for him,” Dean grumbles, leaning on one arm and sorely tempted to resume his full-on slump. “He thinks I’m an asshole.”

Becky picks another fucking Winter Soldier out of the goddamn box and looks at Dean like she’s _daring_ him to say shit about it. He can practically see the phantom _this one’s wearing a mask tho_ emanating from the heat in her scowl. God save him from anal collectors.

“You are kind of an asshole, Dean,” she says.

Dean grouses, “Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t get me wrong, though! You’re definitely the ‘asshole with a heart of gold’ archetype.” Becky holds a Funko Pop figure of Ironman aloft and hugs it to her chest. “Like Tony Stark. Or Wolverine. Or Han Solo.”

Without missing a beat, Charlie pipes, “Or Shrek.”

“ _Charlie_ —”

“Becky’s right, Dean! She’s totally got you pegged,” Charlie says, idly turning the spinner rack filled with new books near the front door.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, not really. It’s a trap to accept it. It’s an even _bigger_ trap to deny that he’s actually a nice guy. He’s pretty sure he _is_ actually a nice guy. These days, since he’s gotten out of his head a little bit, you don’t even have to dig that deep to find it. 

Instead, he whines, “But how will he know about the _heart of gold_ part if I can’t get close enough to work my magic?”

“What _you_ need,” Becky says definitively, gently placing her matching Cap and Bucky Funkos in front of him on the checkout counter. “Is a grand gesture. Like at the end of a romcom! Like a big airport running scene. Or like—” She pushes the figures together in a plastic-muffled smooch. Wiggling the Cap doll around, she speaks none too subtly out of the corner of her mouth, her voice a poor gruff imitation of Steve Rogers. “ _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line!_ ”

Dean rolls his eyes harder.

Charlie sighs and says, “Iconic.”

“ _The Winter Soldier_ wasn’t a fucking romcom, Becky.”

She sniffs haughtily. “That sounds like your _opinion_ to _me_.”

“And, hell, _my life_ isn’t a fucking romcom either!” He fiddles with his goddamn faulty barcode scanner again. It doesn’t want to scan the fucking box, and frankly, it’s humiliated him for the last time and it deserves to get what’s coming to it. Maybe he could have done without the excessive show of physical force, though, he thinks sourly after he’s slammed it into the counter so hard it snaps into at least five discrete and useless pieces. “Goddamnit.”

“Dean,” Becky says sagely as he’s dismally typing in the barcode yet again, “Has it occurred to you that maybe he’s avoiding you because he likes you too? And he’s scared that you _are_ a straight homophobe?”

“And chauvinist.”

“And chauvinist?”

“No,” Dean says. “Because, again, and I _cannot_ stress this enough—this isn’t a _fucking_ romcom!”

Becky shrugs and elects to say nothing in response, like she’s the one taking the high road here, which makes him ten times more infuriated.

He finishes up the transaction and bags her soul-crushing dolls vindictively, and he tells himself that he’s going to push it from his head. Because it’s stupid. It’s stupid. A grand gesture? That’s stupid. Where’s he even going to—what would he even.

Many, many hours later, rousing abruptly from a sound sleep in bed, Dean stares at the empty ceiling above his head and says, “Son of a _bitch_.”

* * *

He tells Charlie the plan, just to get a read on whether or not it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. And maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, because she busts out laughing so hard she knocks a spinner rack over, but she also says, “Oh my god, you _have_ to do that. You _have_ to,” which is as much of a ringing endorsement as he could ask for.

The nice thing is, he already _has_ the panties, so that’s one less thing to check off his list later. 

Wrestlers like to _act_ like they don’t wear panties on stage, but bullshit if they don’t. Their “costumes” don’t leave much to the imagination, and it sure doesn’t make it more “sporty” or whatever the fuck to have everything but nuts ‘n butts on display. No reason to be precious about what you call your costume when you’re putting your junk in other guys’ faces every other Saturday night, anyway.

After much deliberation, he picks a satin pink pair with a lacey waistband because that’s the vibe he’s going for. And when he’s trying them on—just to be sure—he takes a minute, alone in the little apartment he keeps above his shop, to just admire. What he’s got going on. He’ll have to wear something under these to keep everything down there reined in, obviously, but he looks pretty good, all things considered. The stupid freckles and the bowed legs that fuck up his silhouette don’t really make much difference in the wrestling ring, after all.

He blinks at his reflection, and a sense of calm self-awareness sweeps over him like a warm wave. And damn, no wonder everyone fuckin’ knew he was out before he did. Even if he wasn’t fucking every guy in town, he’s had lace peeking out from the waistband of his blue jeans every time he’s bent over for pretty much as long as he’s run the shop. Since his dad died, and he started therapy, and he realized, hey fuck you, it felt really good to wrap your dick up in satin. You should try it sometime, asswipe.

The other nice thing is, Donna has a bedazzler. He knows, because she talks about it all-the-fuckin’-time, and her wife Jody talks about it, too—albeit in a much less favorable light, because she’s the one that gets the bedazzled bandanas for Christmas. One time, Donna made her a denim vest that said JODES on the back in bright green gemstones. Donna must’ve worked pretty hard on it, too, because Dean actually saw Jody outside the house in it once. 

The things dumb fucking idiots do for love.

Jody and Donna’s adopted daughter Claire, the teenage pseudo-troublemaker who sneaks out of the house after curfew just so she can show up at Dean’s house and beat him at Magic the Gathering, has the makeup. And she _owes_ him for all the times he never told her goddamn moms about said escapades, so together they work out a pink panty-based _look_ that makes him look equal parts flirty, tarty, and fierce.

The other, other nice thing is Gunner Lawless owes him a favor. Well, a few favors. Possibly more favors than is strictly appropriate or necessary. And Gunner Lawless has been trying to get him on stage for some fucking rage in the cage since the first time he and Dean fucked, and presumably, since he saw what a draw Dean’s perky nipples would be for a general audience at large.

So Dean calls in at least one of those favors. Gunner, the absolute fucking _queen_ , is far too accommodating. He’s clearly all about the Dean’s-life-is-a-rom-com thing, all about the fucking drama. He even takes the opportunity, like he’s been saving them specifically for this (and hell, maybe he has been), to bestow a pair of thigh-high, white, lace-up, high-heeled boots in an absolutely _perfect_ men’s size twelve. Like Dean’s fucking gay wrestler Cinderella.

“Did you _buy these_ for _me_?”

“Not _for_ you, but I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t have you in _mind._ ” He winks. “Think of ‘em as a good luck charm.”

Good luck charm, Dean’s ass. Gunner just wanted to watch the show when Dean tried them on to make sure they fit. And boy, did they fit. Dean can’t exactly say he blames Gunner for his honesty, because Dean’s legs look _awesome_. Aside from the initial wobble that comes from walking in heels, everything goes smooth, and he looks like he’s got about twice as much leg as he did ten minutes ago when he’s finally got all the laces done up tight against his skin.

“I suspect you’re too far gone on this gentleman nurse to wanna give those babies a test run, huh?” Dean claps him on the shoulder, pecks him on the forehead from his new higher vantage, and nods heavily. “Yeah. I thought as much. Never hurt nobody to ask, though.”

* * *

“Alright, y’all. Calm down. Now that we’ve heard from our reigning champ, we have a new challenger _coming out_ in the ring—and we’d all like you to give him a warm welcome!”

Dean tells himself everyone already knows he’s fucking bi as hell anyway, so really, it’s a small step from only-sorta-covertly fucking every guy in town to stepping into a brightly lit ring surrounded by people in pink panties with a B and an I bedazzled on the asscheeks. 

Baby steps.

“And here he is now, folks. The strapping—”

When Gunner was ogling him in hooker boots, he’d asked Dean for a stage name. Something catchy he could announce over a loudspeaker. 

“The _delicate_ —” 

And for all the time Dean spent making fun of Gabriel’s Diabeto née Candyman wrestling career, he came up completely short. 

“The flamboyant—”

“What’s your gimmick, then?” Gunner had said. “What’s your _thing_?”

“The indecisive—”

And, well, literally the entire point of the whole thing was that—

“The Bisexual Dean Winchester!” And Dean comes forward to a sea of cheers. When he told her, Charlie said it was a stupid name, because it wasn’t a pseudonym at all. It’s just Dean’s _actual_ name with a descriptor in front of it. But Dean insisted then that transparency is important. And also that he didn’t particularly want to commit the energy to creating a seperate persona. He’s pretty well fucking over _that_ stage of his life. He is just himself, which is the easiest persona to be.

He throws his hands in the air and basks in the praise.

Wrestling is a fickle machine. One day, you’re the diabetes king of dick mountain, and the next day, some guy sucked another guy’s cock a while ago and now _he’s_ on top (metaphorically speaking, at least, because in the dick-sucking situation he most definitely was not). Dean wasn’t there when Gunner told Gabriel that he was going to have to throw the match so Dean could try to fuck his brother, but he’s sure there to see Gabriel see him for the first time in costume and he looks—

Honestly, tickled. Possibly a little bit too satisfied with himself. Which, frankly, just about fucking figures, doesn’t it? Because he fancies himself some fucking puppetmaster of chaos.

Dean approaches the stage to snatch the mic from the ref. He’s never done this before, but Gunner was absolutely right when he thought that Dean might have a flair for the dramatic. Dean lives for drama. He hadn’t been watching pro wrestling since he was eight years old to _not_ know how to shoot the shit.

“Word on the street is the Candyman has gone soft.” The audience ooooohs. “Word on the street is, he needs his nurse to help him get out of bed in the morning.” The audience ooooooohs harder. “I don’t think it’ll take much effort to end this, do you?” The audience cheers.

He reaches the ring, rolling under the bottom rope and into the spotlight with all the athleticism of a thirty-something guy who owns a comic shop and went on a run with his brother once about a year ago. No one seems to mind, though, because they’re busy with Gabriel’s schtick, which has him pacing the side of the ring, conferring with his nurse slash coach slash brother. But Dean’s very satisfied to see that despite the act, despite the show of leading Gabriel to another inspiring victory in the ring, Castiel can’t take his eyes off Dean. His brows are furrowed deep, like he’s trying to put together a thrift store puzzle where none of the pieces even came from the same box.

Dean points at Gabriel, brings the mic up to his face again. Smirks with all the flamboyant showmanship he can manage. Which is actually a lot, because Dean reads a lot of fucking nonsense. “I don’t follow your rules _Diabeto_ ,” Dean says. “The Bisexual Dean Winchester operates under a different set.” 

He points at Gabriel, and declares, “I’m taking _you_ out.”

And while the audience is busy reacting to that with surprise and outrage in turn, Mr. Diabeto himself is busy pacing, hyping everyone up for himself, looking outraged in a way that Dean doesn’t exactly recognize as outrage, because there’s a wink of amusement in his eye.

In the midst of it, Dean waits, finger still pointing, until the excitement dies down. And when it has, he holds the hand that’s not pointing aloft, catching everyone’s attention before he shifts his pointing finger deliberately to Castiel outside the ring and says, with as much cheese as he can muster, “I’m taking _you_ out _on a date.”_

He can hear Charlie fucking losing her mind outside the ring, and he’s not sure if Sam is with her, but frankly, he doesn’t care to check. He knows it’s not exactly the _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line_ of pro wrestling that Becky was hoping for, but it’s possibly the most candor he’s used to ask out a guy in...ever. Mostly because he doesn’t really ask guys out so much as he sucks their brains out through their dicks and lets them take him to breakfast the next day because they’re too fuck-dumb to regret it.

Castiel could look annoyed or put out or embarrassed, but he’s got that same look about him Gabriel does. A smirk, a sweet curiosity that burns embers in his eyes and makes Dean wanna smile, because he knew that it was going to be like this. For some reason he fell for this dumb fucker the first time he ever saw him, and he doesn’t believe in destiny, exactly, but here he is on the stage in pink bedazzled panties eye-fucking the hottest guy he’s ever seen. Which is _about_ as romantic as it gets.

And then Gabriel, who Dean’s lost track of in all the time he was busy extracting love songs from uninterrupted eye contact, flies straight off the ropes, into his periphery, and hits him with a goddamn diving elbow drop.

* * *

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” Cas says, slamming Dean into the door of the McMansion of a house he apparently shares with Gabriel. Cas hovers, breathing heat into his lips for a while, mouthing over his neck, tugging down his collar to get at the sweat Dean is sure gathered in the divots there during the match.

“Well, it worked didn’t it?” Dean pants. Cas hums noncommittally into his mouth. 

He can feel Cas patting in his own pockets for his keys, somewhere south of where the kissing is happening. He kisses Dean into the doorway all the way through working the key into the lock. And then he humps him straight through the opening door.

“Gabriel won’t be back for a while,” Cas says. “He’s probably out for pizza with the rest of the crew.”

“Oh,” Dean breathes. “Okay.” He let Castiel direct him here because it was a lot closer to the rec center than Dean’s place. He didn’t necessarily think about Gabriel having to listen to them fuck.

Diabeto lost the match, but that’s definitely not what has Castiel all hot and bothered for him. Truth be told, Dean hadn’t thought that far ahead of his _very_ good pick-up line, because it was, _should_ have been, kind of a game-ender right there. The Bisexual Dean Winchester was supposed to make love (to everyone), not war, and the Bisexual Dean Winchester was all about winning on a technicality once he had taken Cas out for burgers or something and Gabriel succumbed to a blood sugar crisis in the wake of Dean’s romantic overtures.

Which, in a testament to the true ridiculousness of the local wrestling scene, is _basically_ what actually happened. But not before Gabriel dia-beat-o the shit out of him, first.

Inside the house, Castiel pushes Dean through a foyer, into a breakfast bar separating a living room from an open kitchen as he’s working Dean’s pants open with one hand. Dean feels the impact of the slam in his lower back, where he’s pretty sure Gabe got him with some kind of spinning back fist.

He breathes, “Ow,” into Castiel’s mouth, and Castiel pulls back long enough to look him in the eye, smiling. 

“Poor Dean,” he simpers, plumping up his cock with sweet little pets. “My brother beat the hell out of you.”

Dean whines. 

“He had to. I needed you to know I meant business. The Bisexual Dean Winchester, _ah ah ah!_ ” Dean thrusts uselessly against feather-light touches. “You needed to know the Bisexual Dean Winchester wasn’t a raging—raging asshole. I’ll take a beating to prove I’m not h-homophobic.”

Castiel pulls back and looks him in the eye. With his free hand, the one that’s not skillfully pressing on his growing erection, he thumbs at where Dean knows he has tear trails in the makeup Claire so carefully applied for him. He saw them in the bathroom before he and Castiel escaped into the night to make out like teenagers in Dean’s car for a while, and he thought it looked kinda—good. It made his eyes look real green. 

Judging from the way Cas bites his lip when he’s scanning Dean’s face over, he seems to feel the same.

“Dean. Sweetheart. I knew you weren’t homophobic.”

Dean blinks and tries not to pout when Cas takes his hand out of Dean’s pants to cradle his hip.

He says, “Huh?”

Cas runs a gentle thumb over the crest of hipbone, just above his sagging jeans.

“Dean,” Cas leans forward, licks into his mouth, and pulls back to whisper against his lips, heady like a seduction. “You’ve fucked, like, every guy in town.”

Dean pulls back a bit, looking at Castiel’s wrecked head of hair, his kiss-swollen lips. 

He says, “Aw, man, _seriously_?”

“It’s not like I _mind,_ Dean. I’m only saying.”

“S’embarrassing.”

Castiel grins with his eyes half mast. He shushes Dean with a clumsy finger against his mouth, then dives back into Dean’s pants with the other hand. He manages to get a good solid rhythm going, and Dean’s totally fucked libido, which has _wanted_ Cas since he first laid eyes on him, has Dean _uhn_ ing and _ah_ ing like he’s already getting fucked with just a hand around his dick.

“I used to live in LA, you know. And no one talks to anyone there. Neighbors don’t care what you do as long as you stay out of their business.” Cas breathes into his temple. Dean pants into his neck, and Cas finally, finally, pushes Dean’s jeans down enough to show the lacey, satiny front of his panties cum wrestling uniform (cum...cum, hopefully). “But here, you can’t get people to stop talking. It’s honestly...refreshing. Nice.” 

He uses the crook of his arm to shift Dean’s head until his lips are against Dean’s ear. “Tell me, is Gunner’s cock as big as I think it is?” He breathes. Dean pants, and he can’t handle thinking about _that_ while he’s doing _this_ , so all he can do is nod. Cas nods back, nips at his earlobe, and groans, “You fucking slut.” And Dean very clearly likes that _very_ much coming from Cas’s lips, because they definitely both feel the way his cock jumps.

Castiel pushes Dean back with a knowing look and moves his hand to the front of the panties, until he’s stroking Dean through them, fondling his balls, watching the head peek over the waistband. He looks almost fond.

“I can’t believe you made me watch you traipse all over bumfuck Kansas,” he pants. “I had to listen to every single person in this town talk about how fuckable you were, and I was too mad to even consider it.”

“Small towns.” Dean shrugs, falling back into Cas’s lavish attentions. “A blessing and a curse.”

“Well, the whole town… It wasn’t just _fuckable_ , Dean. I heard down a very nosey and complimentary grapevine that you—” he nuzzles against Dean’s cheek. “Tipped well in the diner. And ran youth programs.” He’s on the move, making another hot line of kisses over Dean’s collarbone, and his whole shirt...situation is about to wear out its welcome real quick. “And built your comic shop from the ground up.” He taps his thumb against Dean’s slit, pulls a trail of messy precome into the delicate lace. “And taught classes for deaf kids. And donated books to the library. And sent your little brother to law school when your dad—”

Dean pulls back this time.

“Hey can we _not_.” He licks his lips. “On the whole brother front. Right this _second_?”

Cas grins. “I’m just trying to say that you seemed like a catch. You—I mean, yes, obviously you’re an idiot,” his nose crinkles in delight when he sees Dean scowl. “But I think I like you. Which sounds stupid because—” 

“No,” Dean supplies breathily. “No, I. I think I like you...too. You’re—the wrestling and the nursing and the—” Cas gets this look about him then that Dean can only describe as hopelessly _soft,_ which only makes the whole...dominance thing even more hot, goddamnit. The guy’s an ever-evolving paradox of pure sex. Dean shrugs. “I like you too.”

“Oh good,” Cas says cheekily. “We should go on a date sometime.” And then he brings his hand up to lick Dean’s mess off his thumb. Dean’s breath stutters and he nods helplessly.

“Date. We should. We. Uh.”

“You know,” Cas pontificates, entirely too coherent as he runs his spit-slick thumb over Dean’s cheekbone again. “I felt so strongly that I even came to see you earlier today, at your shop. But your associate with the red hair told me you wouldn’t be in.”

Dean was at the shop all day doing inventory in the back.

Dean deadpans, “Did she.” Cas hums an agreement.

Yeah, sure she did. She sure did. She _sure did_. 

He’s gonna have a talk with Charlie tomorrow. After he’s done getting his brains fucked out.

“But my...my moment.” Dean’s mouth is dry, his tongue is chalk. “There wasn’t really a point in me being an idiot in front of half the town, was there?”

Cas gives a pointed pet over Dean’s junk encased in lace, then he smoothes two giant fucking unreal hands over Dean’s back, under his shirt, and down into his pants, where he squeezes the bedazzled _B_ and _I_ over Dean’s asscheeks and pulls Dean’s crotch into his in a solid grind.

And then he says, “Now, I wouldn’t say _that_.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Come find me on tumblr!](http://schmerzerling.tumblr.com)


End file.
